1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a membership service using a network such as the Internet. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and a method for processing a membership qualification for each of a plurality of services.
2. Description of the Related Art
A service provider on a network should certificate a user who is accessing the network so as to charge the user for a service fee. In a conventional service system, when one user uses a plurality of services, the uses different certificating methods designated by the individual services.
FIG. 1 shows such a conventional service system. When user 11 uses two services A and B, the user 11 sends identification (ID) and a password (PWD) for the service A to a server 12 of the service A. The server 12 references a user management database (user management DB) 13, certificates the user, and provides the service A to the user 11.
The user 11 sends an ID and a password for the service B to a server 14 of the service B. The server 14 references a user management DB 15, certificates the user, and provides the service B to the user 11. In such a manner, the user 11 can use the network services A and B.
However, the above-described conventional service system has the following problems.
When one user uses a plurality of network services, the user should take a membership qualification for each service. At that time, the user should input designated personal information on a terminal unit. Thus, when the number of services that the user uses increases, the load of the user increases.
Each service provider should perform a membership qualification for each user. Thus, each service provider should analyze personal information sent from each user. Consequently, as the number of users who want become members increases, the load of the service provider increases.
When each service provider starts a new service, while predicting the number of new members, the service provider should designate conditions used for the membership qualification. To do that, a system that allows the relation between the designated conditions and the number of members to be effectively analyzed is desired.